Wednesday, June 8, 2022

A Vintage KRON Special 30 Minutes: "Live at 5"

One of the VERY BEST Bay Area TV newscasts...

Old KRON's vaunted "Live at 5" with Bob Jimenez and Evan White.

It was 30 minutes of crisp, concise news content with snappy stories, news, breaking news, (real) weather and sports updates and poetically funny, snappy and brilliant traffic reports from Bob McCarthy in "Chopper 4" (Bob was a hoot but just sincere and genuine enough to keep viewers happy.)

Live at 5 was orininal. A former KRONvict told me at 5: 29: 50 (when Jimenez looked back and to the green screen to the network, (NBC) for "Nightly News") a collective, one-second sigh took place. Nobody was pissed, mere adulation and hard work --relief! But rejoice too. Staff had a universal show of joy. Labor and reward. It was a daily ritual and it worked.

There is hardly a sliver of Live at 5 today. Nothing comes even close.

Posted by at

14 comments:

  1. AnonymousJune 8, 2022 at 12:50 PM

    Does Youtube carry KRON content live?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownJune 8, 2022 at 1:23 PM

      I don't believe so. We have YouTubeTV and its not on there. We need to use the KRON-ON app for Kron news.

      Delete
    2. AnonymousJune 8, 2022 at 5:04 PM

      Thx!

      Delete
    3. AnonymousJune 18, 2022 at 10:30 PM

      We’ve had YouTubeTV for months and reading your comment is the first I’d noticed. My fav KRON memory was when they lost network affiliation, the weatherman said “it’s raining resumes!”

      Delete
  2. AnonymousJune 8, 2022 at 1:24 PM

    Like so much in the 80s it was…fast

    Great pacing

    BTW it was Telecopter 4

    What ever happened to Rita Cohen the successor to Bob in TC4? She did “Daybreak”

    Another innovation at KRON the 630am news

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJune 8, 2022 at 4:37 PM

    This brings back memories of Journalism at its best. Worked with all these people for all of those years. Man! Did we know how to cover news back then!

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousJune 8, 2022 at 7:57 PM

    We were the best!!!! In fact many critics said we were one of the best local stations in the country.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousJune 8, 2022 at 9:30 PM

    The control room was semi-controlled chaos with fast Freddy directing and Joe Fragola producing

    ReplyDelete
  6. Tom DevriesJune 8, 2022 at 9:51 PM

    I was there as well. If I had realized then how extraordinary it was, and how fragile, I'd have appreciated it even more. Evan and Bob, and the whole bunch, were just great.

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousJune 9, 2022 at 5:22 AM

    How was it original? It was a rundown of the days news stories with two anchors reading a teleprompter. I see nothing groundbreaking here...even at the time. It was nothing new.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousJune 9, 2022 at 11:24 AM

      How was it original? Journalistically, Bob and Evan were at the top of their games, both excellent interviewers; Evan's "debriefs" were not from a prompter. Technically, KRON was the only local station that utilized their bureaus daily (Sacto/EBay/SJ/Washington DC), as well as their extensive microwave and satellite network. Great anchors, reporters, tech staff who won awards.

      Delete
  8. AnonymousJune 9, 2022 at 9:54 AM

    Anyone recall a favorite KPIX news team of mine? It was anchored by Ron Majers, had the wonderfully acerbic Rolfe Peterson doing feature stuff and reviews and Barry Thompkins covering sports.

    It was a long time ago.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousJune 9, 2022 at 3:13 PM

      Dave McElhatton, Wendy Tokuda, Wayne Walker and Joel Bartlett

      Delete
  9. AnonymousJune 9, 2022 at 5:31 PM

    well maybe people like Kurtenbach and others may be checking phone and checking up on other interests while on air--maybe smart phone addicted culture is''on the air''. like jerks driving while checking phones.these people are more dangerous than many ''houseless'' people.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)